Part 50

Intelligence is a luxury, sometimes useless, sometimes fatal. It is a torch or a fire-brand according to the use one makes of it.--Fernan Caballero.

~Intemperance.~--The body, overcharged with the excess of yesterday, weighs down the mind together with itself, and fixes to the earth that particle of the divine spirit.--Horace.

Intemperance is a great decayer of beauty.--Junius.

~Intolerance.~--Nothing dies so hard, and rallies so often, as intolerance.--Beecher.

Intolerance is the curse of every age and state.--Dr. Davies.

~Invective.~--Invective may be a sharp weapon, but over-use blunts its edge. Even when the denunciation is just and true, it is an error of art to indulge in it too long.--Tyndall.

~Invention.~--Invention is a kind of muse, which, being possessed of the other advantages common to her sisters, and being warmed by the fire of Apollo, is raised higher than the rest.--Dryden.

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory. Nothing can be made of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.--Sir J. Reynolds.

~Irony.~--Irony is to the high-bred what billingsgate is to the vulgar; and when one gentleman thinks another gentleman an ass, he does not say it point-blank, he implies it in the politest terms he can invent.--Bulwer-Lytton.

~Irresolution.~--Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions.--Feltham.

Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness.--Addison.

Irresolute people let their soup grow cold between the plate and the mouth.--Cervantes.

~Irritability.~--Irritability urges us to take a step as much too soon as sloth does too late.--Cecil.

An irritable man lies like a hedgehog rolled up the wrong way, tormenting himself with his own prickles.--Hood.

~Ivy.~--The stateliest building man can raise is the ivy's food at last.--Dickens.

The ivy, like the spider, takes hold with her hands in king's palaces, as every twig is furnished with innumerable little fingers, by which it draws itself close, as it were, to the very heart of the old rough stone. Its clinging and beautiful tenacity has given rise to an abundance of conceits about fidelity, friendship, and woman's love, which have become commonplace simply from their appropriateness. It might also symbolize the higher love, unconquerable and unconquered, which has embraced this ruined world from age to age, silently spreading its green over the rents and fissures of our fallen nature.--Mrs. Stowe.

~Jealousy.~--What frenzy dictates, jealousy believes.--Gay.

Jealousy sees things always with magnifying glasses which make little things large, of dwarfs giants, suspicions truths.--Cervantes.

'Tis a monster begot upon itself, born on itself.--Shakespeare.

Women detest a jealous man whom they do not love, but it angers them when a man they do love is not jealous.--Ninon de L'Enclos.

A jealous man always finds more than he looks for.--Mlle. de Scudéry.

Jealousy is the sister of love, as the devil is the brother of angels.--Boufflers.

~Jesting.~--Jests--Brain fleas that jump about among the slumbering ideas.--Heinrich Heine.

The jest loses its point when the wit is the first to laugh.--Schiller.

And generally, men ought to find the difference between saltness and bitterness. Certainly, he that hath a satirical vein, as he maketh others afraid of his wit, so he had need be afraid of other's memory.--Bacon.

~Jewelry.~--Jewels! It's my belief that when woman was made, jewels were invented only to make her the more mischievous.--Douglas Jerrold.

~Jews.~--Talk what you will of the Jews; that they are cursed: they thrive wherever they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and as for their being hated, why Christians hate one another as much.--Selden.

They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond the Pyramids.--Lamb.